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Category: Architecture

Catch the Lafayette Building's windows -- fast

The Lafayette Building, a v-shaped structure across from the marvelously restored Book-Cadillac (Westin) Hotel, is doomed. The Detroit City Council, in its infinite wisdom, has decided it has to come down -- and that yet another dusty, empty lot with a fence around it is somehow preferable to a standing building.

The Lafayette Building, on Lafayette Boulevard at Shelby just west of Woodward Avenue.

Well, there's no accounting for taste, and the dismissive contempt many in the Detroit power structure have for the city's magnificent trove of empty buildings is legendary.

The Lafayette Building in itself is completely forgettable. What's brilliant, however, are the cartoon images that have been spraypainted on the insides of its dozens of windows -- a pop-art treat every time you walk down Lafayette Boulevard.

The grasshopper, A.B. is told, is the trademark of the mystery artist behind these graffiti'd windows.

A reader wrote ArchBlogger once to say that the windows were done by a downtown artist who goes by the name K.J. A.B.'s in the process of checking that out.

The work on the Lafayette Building is reminiscent of the great artwork on the windows of the United Artists Building on Bagley, just west of Grand Circus Park. Those with good memories will recall that the building owners, the Iliches, had all that graffiti scrubbed off just before the 2006 Super Bowl in Detroit.

We Michiganders are such delicate flowers these days -- always so afraid outsiders will laugh at us. The United Artist windows represented some of the coolest, rebel art in the city. A.B. can't help but think, had they left them up, Super Bowl visitors would have told their friends back home about this way-cool, whacked-out building they couldn't stop looking at, and what it suggested about this city's spirit.

But that's just A.B.'s opinion.

Graffiti art waxes political -- a leftover from the George W. Bush era.

Anyhow, there's already a fence around the Lafayette Building, and it looks like it's not long for this world. A.B. assumes the city came under some pressure from the Westin folks across the street from it -- and you can hardly blame them.

But when those windows are all knocked out, something valuable will be lost -- an encouraging reminder that an inventive, puckish artistic spirit is alive and well in Detroit, and unafraid to show its glorious, unconventional colors.